South Korean student molested on bus in India: police

KOLKATA – Three men chased and allegedly molested a South Korean student on a bus in eastern India, police said Monday, in the latest incident to raise fears over women’s safety in the country.

The 20-year-old college student was trying to board a crowded bus in Kolkata early Monday when three men tried to drag her out of the vehicle, police official Subhendu Barik said.

“She managed to get into the bus. The youths also boarded the bus and stood behind her” and then allegedly “grabbed her buttocks and breasts,” he said.

The computer science student jumped off the bus with the men in pursuit and then ran toward a traffic official who helped catch one of the three and brought him to a nearby police station, where she filed a complaint.

Female commuters in India often face sexual harassment in the country’s congested buses and trains, where men easily outnumber women.

The fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old student by six men on a moving bus in the Indian capital of New Delhi last December highlighted a lack of safe transport for women in the country of 1.2 billion people.

Police said they were searching for the two other men accused of molesting the South Korean woman who is studying in the city.

The arrested man later appeared in court and was remanded in police custody until April 2, Kolkata deputy police chief Sumanjit Roy said.

The incident comes just days after a British tourist jumped off a hotel balcony in the Taj Mahal city of Agra to escape an alleged sexual assault. Earlier this month, a Swiss cyclist was gang-raped in Madhya Pradesh while a South Korean tourist was allegedly drugged and raped in the same state in January by the son of the owner of a hotel where she was staying.